| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic. By Stuart Leibiger. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. xii, 284 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8139-1882-0.)

George Washington was a great leader, but never a great friend. A strict disciplinarian in war, he maintained an aloofness in peacetime. Even the marquis de Lafayette, whom he treated at times like the son he never had, kept his place. And so did James Madison. 1

Despite the title, the author has dealt mainly with practical politics and expediency rather than friendship. In juxtaposition with the Jefferson-Madison friendship, which stretched over fifty years, Stuart Leibiger admits that Madison and Washington were in close quarters for only four years. Yet the author contends that their collaboration, "which has received little notice, was the most important pairing of all, outweighing all other permutations during the all-important 1785–1790 period." 2

Hyperbole and history often go hand in hand. To claim that the Republic might not have survived without Madison backstopping Washington during a four-year span is a pardonable offense. Madison patiently used Washington's fame to rejuvenate the ailing political structure with a constitutional convention and the follow-up ratification. Then he became a trusted ghostwriter early in the Washington administration. . . .

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